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proppaNOW recently had its first commercial exhibition in Melbourne at Fehily Contemporary in Collingwood.

For this show I wanted to challenge and extend certain elements that exist in my 'After the Flood' series.

Instead of painting the Aboriginal language groups i made casts of the names and froze the text with pigment and water. The language then melted over the landscape and resembled a bloodstain. These works are about what has been sacrificed and what continues to be sacrificed in order for Australia to exist in its current state of cultural amnesia.

Ice melting - In progress

image credit: Toby Fehily

image credit: Toby Fehily

image credit: Toby Fehily

Paintings Dried:

image credit: Fehily Contemporary

image credit: Fehily Contemporary

image credit: Fehily Contemporary

Opening night:

(bottom L-R: Gary Foley & Richard Bell & Tony Albert)

Artlink Launch in China, July 2012

Artlink Magazine launched a special edition of its 'Artlink Indigenous' fully translated into Mandarin in Beijing and Chengdu, China earlier this year. Djon Mundine OAM, Archie Moore, Zhou Xiaoping and myself were invited to launch this special edition and present our works to audiences in China. It was my first time overseas and it was the best!

Tambo Rural Residency, May 2012

Curator Kevin Wilson put together a residency program for 7 Artists to partake in Tambo, which is approximately 880Kms north west of Brisbane. Artists were invited and encouraged to respond to the town and residents with drawings, sketches and ideas about Public art. I decided to create an installation on the banks of the mighty Barcoo River and invited residents to the event which was held at night time.

The installation was an animated text projection of the four Aboriginal nations from the region and had their approximate boundaries connected to the Barcoo river, It also featured glowing floodlines marking the recent high watermark from January's flooding.

The installation was captured and transformed into a video work.

image courtesy: Greg Stonehouse

images courtesy: Gerard Hindle

Big thanks to Gerard who came out to Tambo also and filmed and edited the 'Banks of the Barcoo'

After the Flood - DocumentaryA very talented young local film maker Adric Watson made this documentary for our proppaNOW exhibition which is on at the Queensland State Library in Kuril Dhagun until September 2012.

I went to Cairns for the NEWflames Residency, during the 5 weeks I met some great people and completed the following body of works titled Toponyms.
Many thanks Annie Gamble Myer for her support to the development of emerging Indigenous artists, Renai Grace and fellow resident artist Shannon Brett!

ToponymsPlace names are an important aspect of culture and identity as they provide location where history, events, landscapes and people are remembered, celebrated and continued.

Toponyms are always reflective of the dominant culture and its position upon the land in which it occupies. Military topographical maps (circa 1935-41) of regions around Cairns and Cooktown are highlighted in these works. The use of language and basic cartographic symbology reveal a multilayered fluid landscape with dual histories & dual identities.